


The Arrival of Christoph Metzelder - The Madrid Diaries

by ninamalfoy



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-08-09
Updated: 2010-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-11 00:36:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninamalfoy/pseuds/ninamalfoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1,500 kilometers between Madrid and Dortmund.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Arrival of Christoph Metzelder - The Madrid Diaries

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on LJ on August 18th, 2007.
> 
> Not true in the least bit. I'm just borrowing their public persona to play.

Madrid was Gonzalez laughing and chatting with Ramos, quicksilver Spanish losing its meaning whenever he strained to listen to their conversations, a washed-out blue sky mirrored in the swathes on the Real jersey, and the barked commands of Bernd Schuster, his blond hair turning into a saint-like halo from the sun's glare.

Madrid was also putting his books in order on the shelves in his new flat, brushing over their backs, his besocked feet shuffling on the waxed wooden floor gleaming in the morning sun. It was buying groceries at the supermercado down the street, oranges and apples ending up in his shopping cart along with mangoes, a can of San Miguel beer, noodles and rice, along with pre-mixed sauces, and a box of water bottles. It was browsing delivered German newspapers in the morning, leafing through the pages as he sipped hot coffee sweetened with artificial sugar. It was exchanging pleasantries with the cleaning lady whose diligence more than made up for the heavily accented Spanish, her eyes twinkling in the dark face.

Christoph wasn't a poet, but if he were, he would describe Madrid like this: a never-ending song about love and loss, sung by a voluptuous performer in an elegant red satin dress, her voice vibrating with passion and her eyes closed, showing off the long fake eyelashes, black curls glued to her temples. The scent of cigarillos in the tapas bars mixing with the smell of freshly prepared tortillas and fajitas, overlaid with the perfumes of the women laughing at the tables and the exhaust smoke of the cars in the streets. Gleaming white teeth in a small tanned face belonging to a little boy grinning up at him, the dark matted fur of a stray dog slinking along the front of a little carnicería that sold jamon, the famous Spanish ham, in various sizes and kinds, the resplendent pink and red and magenta of the gardenias on the windowsills, flourishing in the scorching heat.

Madrid was all this and more. It was feeling slow and lacking in speed, it was longing for a cool breeze with the scents of someone barbecuing across the street with bursts of laughter floating through the air supported by low-key German jazz songs. It was missing Schwarzbrot and potato salad and rapeseed honey and leberwurst and quark and his mother's self-made strawberry marmalade. It was remembering people he had to leave behind and realizing that hearing only their voices on the phone was a poor substitute for the real thing. Christoph said in interviews that he didn't miss Germany, smiling at the photographers and the reporters until his smile ached from hiding the lie.

He touched himself late at night, closing his eyes because he couldn't bear the stark emptiness of the walls in his bedroom; heels pressing into the mattress as shivers ran through his body, slippery precome coating his impatient fingers. When he opened his eyes again, there was always a perfect circle of teeth marks on his left hand, curving around his thumb, darkish and swollen.

And there was also the fleeting echo of Basti's voice, rough with passion, and almost-real touches, ghosting along the lines of tense muscles in his thigh, fluttering along the jut of his hipbone and skating around the ticklish areas on his side until they circled his nipples. If Christoph concentrated just enough, he could smell him, too – cleanfresh with a hint of something forest-sharp, like pine needles and earth, and the sharp scent of dried sweat.

Whenever Basti called, he didn't tell him. Instead, he told him about the gentle brusqueness of Bernd, about the dinner last week with Jörg who had flown in from Dortmund, about the harsh beauty of Madrid, the grandeur of old times setting the background for the flashy modern buildings and the colorful inhabitants. In exchange, Basti told him about the new additions to the squad – Giovanni and Kuba and Diego and Robert, about Luis and his latest discoveries, about the progress with his knee. His voice was light, and yet Christoph could hear the weight of words unsaid. Basti's "Mach's gut" at the end of every phone call also meant 'I miss you'. And 'I need you.' And 'I want you.'

At night, it was always the same dream. At training, he would look up from doing exercises, slightly out of breath, squinting against the bright sun settling over the roof of the Bernabeu, and Basti would be there, sitting on the bench and waving. His smile would dimple his cheeks, the grey eyes alight with love, and Christoph would sink into his hug, burying his sweaty face in the warm crook of Basti's neck, coming home. And he would – if he remembered – wake up with a sweet ache pooling in his stomach that couldn't be chased off with hot coffee nor with buttered croissants.

He was grateful for the distraction that the training presented; for running laps with the sweat-soaked jersey glued to his back, for the stretching exercises on the dry grass, for scrimmage with the other teammates, getting paired up with Torres or Cicinho to practice seamless passes to and fro, weaving through set obstacles, for practice matches, for everything that demanded his full attention. The showers were bliss; hot water drumming on his shoulders, washing away the dirt and the dust and the sweat and the ache, the foamy remnants of the shower gel dissolving on the wetglistening blue tiles that were warm to his touch.

His teammates were friendly enough; Emerson always greeted him with a "Wie geht's?", peppering his broken Spanish with German words he remembered from his three years at Leverkusen, and the two young Spaniards, Torres and Gonzalez, were always apt to tease him good-naturedly, inquiring about Alemania and German women in particular, extolling their virtues that they apparently picked up from models like Claudia Schiffer or Heidi Klum.

But they weren't Basti. They didn't tease him in the same easy way, laughing at his dorkiness or making fun of his vainness, they didn't snatch his shampoo because they preferred it to their own and then forgot to return it, they didn't slap his ass in passing with a quip about its firmness, they didn't quote from dumb German movies, they didn't possess Basti's familiarity with his body, hugging and touching and nudging him whenever possible, and most important of all, they didn't love him the way Basti did. They didn't need him like Basti did, nor did they want him like Basti did.

It would take time, Christoph knew. And he also knew that he owed it to himself and to Basti to grant them time. Time to come to terms with what they meant to each other and what they truly wanted from each other, their friendship notwithstanding – that one was a given. Maybe it would take months, maybe even years, but if there was something Christoph was good at, it was waiting.

Waiting for Basti.


End file.
